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I love this idea: Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe’s, is launching a business
built around selling food that has passed its official sell-by date but remains consumable. The
idea is to make high- quality food available to people who otherwise might not be able to afford
it.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that $47 billion of food is wasted by retailers in the
United States every year.

Rauch’s Urban Food Initiative plans to launch a 10,000-square-foot store in a neighborhood in
Boston where many low-income families live. The location seems to make sense, but will the poor
warm up to a store if the perception is that they’re buying castoffs?

What if, instead, Urban Food Initiative tried to locate such markets in areas where a broader
cross-section of the population lived and shopped?

That seemed to be the model used by Ron Shaich, CEO of Panera Bread, when he launched
PaneraCares, a nonprofit offshoot of his public bakery company built on the premise of customers
paying what they can afford for food. Each PaneraCares is a full-service cafe a la Panera Bread,
but instead of a cash register, it has a donation box.

The company’s mission includes locating in economically diverse areas. The premise: Those who
can afford to pay will; those who can’t might pay less or nothing at all.

Locating in areas of diverse incomes also softens the stigma of buying someone else’s
cast-offs.

Efforts such as the Urban Food Initiative and PaneraCares suggest how entrepreneurs can effect
change.

If the ultimate desire is to help the poor with such initiatives, however, the right thing is to
do them in a way that doesn’t stigmatize the poor but instead emboldens dignity with efforts that
attract all segments of the economy.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, a lecturer in public policy, directs the communication program at the
Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass.